Grey Sky Morning
by SparkleMouse
Summary: She'll always remember the letter that waited for her in her inbox, the pounding of her heart as she opened it and scanned words from a man who had saved her and broken her throughout the timeline of her life.


There are things she knows she'll always remember.

The lilt of her mother's voice on early mornings; that first whiff of summer air, humid and fresh at the same time like possibilities are endless; her first real kiss filled with a little too much tongue and hands that weren't quite sure where to go; the words spoken by John Raglan when he broke the news of her mother's death and the look of defeat that settled deep into her father's eyes in the aftermath; the burning in her chest as the bullet ripped through, the constant repetition of Castle's words as he tried to save her.

The first time he had touched her body, the bruises forming from a fight she was so hell-bent on winning, the gentle caress of his fingers and mouth, the whispered words that caused her eyes to close and her chest to exhale. The fights that had no meaning and ones that were filled with everything but the truth. The first time she said I love you to him, not out of desperation but because it was real and right and everything she had been waiting for. The way they had walked through the rain during a February storm, their hands clasped together, her feet wanting to run and dance and be the child she thought was lost long ago. The shine in his eyes when she broke free, walking backwards into Central Park and how no one had ever looked at her like love wasn't just a fairy tale, but a reality.

An early March morning when he was beside her stiffly in bed and something had changed in a heartbeat, in the single second it takes for the world to fall apart. The pain in their goodbyes, two weeks after their one year anniversary, like maybe none of it was real and it was all a dream, a fantasy, a lie.

And she'll always remember the letter that waited for her in her inbox, the pounding of her heart as she opened it and scanned words from a man who had saved her and broken her throughout the timeline of her life.

_Kate,_

_To be honest, I have no idea how to start this. I'm a writer. I should know how to do this but nothing sounds right. It comes off like excuses or it's not an indication of how much you mean to me, of how much I love you. I thought about calling or driving back into the city to see you__but this agreed upon break might lead to a break _up_ if I do that. I've always found it ironic that I can write out every emotion, put it into the characters I've spent time crafting and yet when it comes down to it, when the words really matter I always seem to fall short._

_Which is how we ended up here. _

_Memorial Day weekend, alone, all the plans we had talked about for months now gone. _

_The last time we were here was right after Christmas. It was your idea to come. It would always surprise me when you mentioned things like this, these moments when I realized you were all in. I knew, but after everything we had been through it still humbled and astounded me. I never told you this – and I realize now that's half the problem – but I fell more in love with you every time you did things like this. Trips to the Hamptons in the middle of winter, the flecks of green that shimmered in your eyes when you teased me; so unlike the woman I met five years ago. The way you'd look at me in the morning when I handed you a cup of coffee like I was bestowing you with the greatest gift in the world._

_It was snowing that afternoon. The kind that coats everything until the world is so ethereal that it all seems like a gift. We were camped out in the living room under piles of blankets, the fire burning and glasses of red wine from your favorite Italian restaurant here and you told me that come summer you wanted at least two weekends in the Hamptons a month if possible, starting with Memorial Day. We made plans like it was forever and spent that entire weekend laughing, wrapped in that cocoon that we had so carefully spun. I can still hear the lingering sounds of your laughter, the ghost of your touch and I miss you. I miss our conversations late into the night (okay,_my _conversations late into the night and your grumbles telling me to shut up and let you sleep.) I miss the way your fingers would play with the hair at the nape of my neck, lazy and loving, and the way you'd bury your head against my chest on those rare mornings we slept past ten. I miss everything about you and yet I know I'm the reason we're here._

_I'm sorry, Kate. I don't even know if that has meaning anymore, but I am._

She had stopped after that, the scar between her breasts aching. She doesn't know how long she sat there, hand pressed against the raised flesh, heart erratic beneath the skin. Daylight turned into dusk and dusk into night, the shadows of the city falling across her walls. The tears clogged her throat first and then fell down her cheeks, while her body became numb with a lifetime of memories. She forced herself to get a drink with Lanie without mentioning the email she still hadn't finished reading, came home and cleaned, showered like it was any normal night. The laptop sat in front of her just after midnight and with shaking fingers she pulled it up again. She could hear his voice as she read, her fingers clenched tight around her favorite blanket despite the stuffiness of her apartment.

_There are two versions of me; Richard Castle, the author and Richard Rodgers, the man. For the longest time I didn't realize there was a difference. I changed my name because I wanted to be separate from my mother's fame. I wanted to shed the skin of the boy I was growing up and become a man who was successful. The attention after__In a Hail of Bullets__came on fast and unyielding. I had women wanting me, publishers lusting after me, but there was a part of me that was still Richard Rodgers because I had Kyra. She kept me grounded, reminded me where I came from and who I was, and when she left I let that man go. I became Rick Castle: the playboy. I got involved with women I wasn't even sure I liked. I married Meredith far too young and when she was gone I partied hard. I got arrested. I was drunk on more occasions than I'd like to admit. I married Gina and while I loved her, something was still missing. Despite all of that, I still loved being that man. He was talented; he had bestselling books and was an incredible father. He threw the best parties and could kick Stephen King's ass at poker. He was obnoxious but there was something about him that men wanted to be and women just wanted. He was funny and childlike and adorable and didn't seem to have a care in the world. He wasn't real._

_I was going through my divorce with Gina when I decided to kill Derrick. I'm not sure if it was to piss her off or to shed the skin of another life but after I did it I panicked. I had nothing in me. I was lost and had convinced myself I'd never write again._

_And then I met you._

_You saved me, Kate. In the simplest - and possibly the most complicated - terms, you saved me. You challenged me in ways no one else ever could. You were this complex equation I didn't know how to solve. You shut me out, you opened up. You rolled your eyes and then gave me pieces of yourself that you obviously never gave to anyone else. You trusted me, even when I was nothing more than a pain in the ass. You made me a better man. You made me _me_ again. And then one day I woke up and I realized I was willing to do anything to make you happy. I fell in love with you. Three years ago or two years ago or maybe since the moment I sat down to write with no one but you on my mind. _

_I can recount our past but you lived it with me. I don't need to remind you of all the near misses, the other people we were with to avoid the feelings we had for each other. I let you go on that afternoon a little over a year ago and it was quite possibly the hardest thing I have ever done. I didn't just want you. I _needed_ you. I needed to see your smile when I handed you a cup of coffee. I needed your advice when it came to Alexis. I needed to see that look in your eyes that made me feel worthy. You made me happier than I could ever remember being and letting that go, letting _you_ go felt like the end of the world. I listened to my daughter give her valedictorian speech about things ending and moving on and knowing that there are some people in our lives who will always be there no matter what. Even then I knew that you would be that person for me. I went home and I tried to imagine the next forty or fifty years of my life without you in it._

_I was an idiot to think it was devastating then when I know what it's like to be with you now. I didn't know the first time around what your skin tasted like just after you showered. The sheer bliss and contentment you found when you listened to Coltrane or the way you fit against my body when your heels were off. I had yet to find those places where you were ticklish and I had no idea that one day you'd smile at me like I was more than enough even when I always doubted I was. I miss the phone calls on the nights we spent apart and the way I could hear your breaths even out as you fell asleep despite your mumbled protests otherwise. I miss spending the night on the couch with wine, pointing blindly to a place on the map and planning a trip. We had so many locations picked out, so many people we wanted to meet on these vacations. You were more adventurous than I realized and I wanted to take you everywhere just to hear you laugh, to listen as you made up stories which sometimes rivaled even mine. I miss those quiet conversations that hinted at marriage and kids and half a century of a life together. I miss everything about you._

It was at sunrise when work called her in again and even weeks later she doesn't know how she made it through that morning and the subsequent hours and days after. She was distracted with trips never taken: Bora Bora, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Cyprus and the theories he was no longer spinning, the ones that drove her crazy and made fall in love. Her phone remained silent at night and despite her anger and hurt over it all, she missed him just as much. She drove when she wasn't working; the windows open and the spring winds stealing her air. She blasted the radio and then turned it off when she was reminded of him, of what was, of what she believed would never be again. She replayed the letter in her head when the silence became deafening and pulled over on the side of the road when the tears blurred her vision. She drank and hit the heavy bag, bit her lip to keep from crying to her father like she was a sixteen year old with her first broken heart.

She read the letter.

Again and again-

-and again.

_I know you think I wasn't as invested in this relationship as you were, but it was never about that. You surprised me. You opened up to me without hesitation. You didn't hide behind the walls that had once been a barrier. You smiled more. You were everything I wanted and nothing in my entire life had ever scared me more. Not raising a daughter alone, not my divorces, not even the impending terror of losing my words. You looked at me like we were forever. You threw me an elaborate surprise party with my mother and daughter. You gave me a drawer in your home like it was the most natural thing in the world. You held my hand during dinner with our parents as if we had been doing this for the past thirty years. You were everything I wanted and I thought if you saw too much of me, the parts of me I'm ashamed of and embarrassed of, you'd realize I wasn't worthy. You'd walk away. _

_So I did it first, metaphorically speaking. I stopped sleeping with my arm around your waist because I knew I'd never be able to let you go if I did. I stopped looking at you for too long. I acted like the immature jackass I was when we met wondering if I would drive you away. I started guarding myself in all the ways I could to lessen what I thought would be the inevitable blow. The moment you realized I could never be good enough, smart enough, or the man that you deserve. In what should have been an obvious case of irony, I wrote the ending I feared and dreaded the most, only to realize that revealing myself to you – all the parts of me I wanted to hide – would have been far better than this. _

She's replaced the car with her Harley today. The road is winding and bare at just after six in the morning. The air is cooler, the sky a metallic shade of grey. The roar of the engine is loud but it's not enough to block out his words. The speed on the odometer rises but it doesn't take away the pain in her chest, the ache of missing him, of hating him, of loving him. Their relationship flashes across the black asphalt as she rides; Demming, Gina, Josh. Their lies and her need for justice and truth, knowing in the end that he mattered more. The way he'd look at her with so much love that it scorched in the best possible way. The softness of his lips and the skilled touch of his fingers. The gentle tone of his _I love you_'s that made her heart clench in ways his writing had done long before she knew him.

She pulls the bike over and steps off. The helmet follows and she inhales a smell that is all at once familiar. She should walk around for a little while, but she knows it won't do anything, won't change anything-

-so she takes baby steps forward-

_I'm in love with you, Kate. I have no doubt that I will always be in love with you._

_I'm ready to talk if you are._

_Rick_

-and knocks.

* * *

Author's Notes: The decision on if I plan on writing chapter two has become a bit of a _thing._ I go back and forth between knowing I probably should and liking where it ends up and it's been an all-out war of a decision. But in the end I've decided that it's complete. I don't necessarily feel like there's a need for a part two and I don't want to ruin what's already here. Holly, thank you for all your help. Your two lines make this worthwhile.

Thanks for reading and I'd love to know what you think!


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